In the past 30 years, sub-national authorities and regional entities have become increasingly involved in immigration policymaking, dealing with a wide range of issues such as immigrant recruitment, selection, settlement or integration. The workshop seeks to attract paper analysing the policies and politics of immigration at the subnational level and the mobilization by sub-national governments and the actors engaged in policy making to a play a most preeminent role. The aim of the workshop is to explore new theoretical insights of the drivers of subnational immigration politics and to examine how to better conceptualize, measure and compare sub-national immigration and integration policies within and across cases. The specific objectives are to:

Act as a bridge between scholarship in Europe, North America, Canada and Australia and examine how to apply insights of the European literature to North American cases, and vice versa, with the aim of a theoretical and methodological cross-fertilization;

Evaluate current concepts and measurements of subnational, as well as local and national immigration policies to identify best strategies to describe and compare cases;

Consider the presence of a wide variety of actors in subnational immigration policymaking, beyond elected officials, and explore their variety of influence;

Reassess, in relation to alternative explanations and different stages of the policy process, the influence of nationalism and linguistic politics on subnational immigration policymaking;

Explore instances of subnational and regional immigration policies in the absence of significant immigrant populations;

Consider interactions between subnational governments and across different types of non-national governments (regional entities and cities), including instances of policy diffusion, competition and emulation in the immigration sector.

Hence, we welcome scholars from the field of immigration studies as well as from the field of territorial politics, party politics, policy analysis, comparative federalism. However, the workshop is also open to scholars from related disciplines focusing on the nexus between immigration and sub-state politics. In particular, we encourage the submission of theoretically informed empirical studies, including single-case studies as well as comparative studies using small-n and/or large-n analyses.

Envisaged output: The convenors of the workshop work towards a publication to follow from the results of the workshop (i.e. edited book and/or special issue of a peer-reviewed journal, depending on the type of papers and participants). Once the workshop program is established, communications with participants will allow for the preparation of the publication outputs in advance of the event.

Format of a Workshop at ECPR Joint Sessions: The workshops are designed to be a forum for substantive discussion on research in progress and collaboration among scholars. They are gatherings of approximately 15 to 20 participants, lasting for about 5 days; presence over the full duration of the workshop is obligatory, as well as the submission of a full draft version of a paper in advance (deadline for paper submission: 31.03.2019). For more information and past editions see: https://ecpr.eu/Events/EventTypeDetails.aspx?EventTypeID=4